Reference Analog Shares All the Right Reference Points at SouthWest Audio Fest 2026

Scott Walker Audio Takes It From the Top at SouthWest Audio Fest 2026

ModWright Does it Right at SouthWest Audio Fest 2026

The Top Turntables, Tonearms, and Cartridges of SouthWest Audio Fest 2026

Semrad Audio and EM/IA Salute Big Horns and Tube Amps at SouthWest Audio Fest 2026

See How the Degritter Mark II Ultrasonic RCM Cleans an LP!

Linear Tube Audio, Prodigio Audio, and Spiritual Sound at SouthWest Audio Fest 2026

Audiophile Newbies Shocked by SRPs at High End Vienna!

Altec Lansing & Infigo Audio at SouthWest Audio Fest 2026

Van Zyl Audio at SouthWest Audio Fest 2026

LATEST ADDITIONS

Solid State Power Amp Reviews

Hafler Transnova 9500 power amplifier

Thomas J. Norton Aug 04, 2016

Boy, do we ever get letters. From readers angry that we review too many expensive products. From readers depressed that we review too many affordable products. From readers bemoaning our digital coverage. From readers asking when we're going to get with the 21st century and stop gushing over analog. From readers wanting more coverage of tube products. From readers wanting more coverage of MOSFET amplifiers designed for high voltage gain on the output stage.

As We See It J. Gordon Holt

Outrageous Price?

J. Gordon Holt Aug 04, 2016

Editor's Note: Approaching its ninth year of publication in 1970, the advertisement-free Stereophile was failing as a business. There was just one issue published between December 1968 and June 1970, the date when J. Gordon Holt published this plea in response to the reaction to the increased subscription price: first to $4 for four issues, equivalent to $25 in 2016, then to $5 ($31). The response from subscribers to his plea was not positive enough to enable the magazine to continue publishingGordon could publish just two more issues in the next two years before Stereophile had to accept advertising, first from dealers in October 1972 and from manufacturers in December 1977.Ed.

Our recent price increase at the end of 1969 elicited numerous letters telling us the magazine was exhorbitant at $4 a subscription and is outrageous at $5, and supporting their contention with comparisons between the price per page of the Stereophile and one or another of the commercial hi-fi magazines. We will answer this once, here and now, and then let the matter drop.

Interviews

Bill Lloyd: Power Pop Icon

Robert Baird Aug 02, 2016

In writing for magazines, there's a basic rule: Don't become the subject. And in writing about the arts, it's best to remember that you aren't in the music business or the film business: you're in the publishing business. Despite this, there are arts writers who fancy they're a part of the world they write about. All famous musicians are their "friends." The music business values their opinions. They're caught up in the delusion that the Rolling Stones sang about so deliciously in "Star Star," the closing number on Goats Head Soup.

J. Gordon Holt Solid State Power Amp Reviews

SAE Mark II Power Amplifier

J. Gordon Holt Aug 02, 2016

It takes a lot of courage for a new company to launch an amplifier like this at time when most manufacturers are courting the mass market with budget-priced receivers, and Marantz is pretty firmly established as the Rolls Royce of audio electronics.

The SAE Mark II has, nominally, the same performance specs as the Dynaco Stereo 120, yet it costs twice as much as a factory-wired Stereo 120, and about 2½ times as much as a Stereo 120 kit. Is the SAE really worth the difference? And how does it compare with some other $400 amplifiers? Well, it all depends.

Interviews Jana Dagdagan

Nels Cline: His Upcoming Blue Note Debut and the Vinyl Trend

Jana Dagdagan Aug 01, 2016

Guitarist Nels Cline will make his Blue Note debut on August 5this coming Friday as a download, with CD following on August 19 and LP on September 2with his album Lovers. It's a beautiful, wide-ranging, 18-track, 23-person-ensemble look inside Nels's soul, and a project that's been in the making for 25 years. It contains a mix of Cline's originals as well as songs by Sonic Youth, Arto Lindsay, Jimmy Giuffre, and Great American Songbook Standards.

Jason Victor Serinus

A Notable nozze di Figaro

Jason Victor Serinus Jul 30, 2016

Virtually every new recording of Mozart's great opera, Le nozze di Figaro (The Marriage of Figaro), is eagerly anticipated. The opera is, after all, an indisputable masterpiece, and frequently described as the most perfect opera ever written. Not only does it contain an irresistible flood of melody, with one hummable, ear worm-like tune after the other, but its music also unfailingly serves da Ponte's libretto. This recording, of concert performances that took place in the Festspielhaus Baden-Baden in July 2015, is especially important for two reasons. The first is its star-studded cast of younger and veteran singers, among whom are four extremely well knowns: bass-baritone Luca Pisaroni (Figaro), baritone Thomas Hampson (Count Almaviva), mezzo-soprano Anne Sofie Von Otter (Marcellina), and tenor Rolando Villazón (Basilio).

Tube Preamp Reviews

Rogue Audio RP-1 preamplifier

Herb Reichert Jul 28, 2016

Pulitzer Prizewinning poet Mary Oliver famously remarked, "attention without feeling . . . is only a report."

After nearly two years of prattling for Stereophile, I am finally grasping the full veracity of that statement. When I read reviews that jabber on about highs, mediums, and lows, and that rely exclusively on nonmusical vocabulary, I come away with feelings of acute cognitive dissonance. Not to mention: if a review has a lot of initialismsADD, S/PDIF, DXD, HDMI, etc.my ADHD kicks in and I stop reading by the third paragraph.

Tube Preamp Reviews

VTL TL6.5 Series II Signature line preamplifier

Fred Kaplan Jul 28, 2016

When I first met Luke Manley, proprietor of VTL, he and his father, David, with whom he ran the company at the time, had recently emigrated from the UK to California. I asked Luke how he liked the West Coast. "Great," he replied. "Much better parts availability." This was about 30 years ago, when I was just immersing myself in high-end audio at a high-toned level. Our exchange gave me a taste of the obsessions ahead, though Luke Manley's single-mindedness through the decades since has been more dogged than manyand, at the same time, less dogmatic.

Headphone Reviews InnerFidelity

Enter the Next Generation: Focal Elear Headphone

Tyll Hertsens Jul 28, 2016

This story originally appeared at InnerFidelity.com

THIS is what a $1000 headphone should be. Unapologetically masculine styling...and sexy; confidently strutting exquisite materials and build-quality; and delivering sound of a quality I've not heard before on any headphone. It walked in my office, swept all the headphones off my desk in one grand gesture, and said, "Here I am. Deal with it."

Art Dudley Listening Cable Reviews

Listening #164: Luna Cables

Art Dudley Jul 26, 2016

I should have seen this coming: Less than a year after the last time I railed against the darkness of cable reviewingthe indignity of crawling around behind my equipment rack, the tedium of comparing one wire to another, the frustration of trying to wring from the experience some fresh and hopefully entertaining observations, the horror of dealing with manufacturers whose hunger for good publicity borders on the vampiricI have once again invited into my home a cable manufacturer and his wares.